


Solivagant

by Anonymous



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Addiction and recovery, Angst, Drug Addiction, M/M, Non hockey au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 21:26:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13256964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Sid starts the day with five pills in his pocket.He takes one with lunch, always. Sometimes takes another before dinner. It depends how he feels.“It’s for my knee,” he says if anyone at work gives him a funny look. “Pain pill.”They nod like they understand, like it’s not a problem.Which it wouldn’t be except Sid’s knee isn’t the part of him that still hurts.





	Solivagant

**Author's Note:**

> Solivagant (adj.) Wandering alone

There are rules against this, Sid thinks, as he slips his hand down the front of Geno’s jeans.

Sid’s been in enough of these groups that he’s developed a keen eye for it. He can glance around a room and within five minutes, at most, he can tell which members are fucking.

It happens all the time.

Not to him, personally, but it happens.

His specific problems don’t always allow him to be good company not even for a quick hand job in the back of someone car or in the alleyway of whatever YMCA or library basement they’ve found themselves in. 

Geno takes a deep breath in through his nose and tips his head back against the brick of the building as Sid jerks him off.

Sid nips at the thin skin of his neck and Geno groans.

There are probably rules against members fucking.

There are definitely rules against members and counselors fucking.

Geno could lose his job over this.

Sid spares a thought for someone else for the first time in a long time and lifts his face from Geno’s neck. He stills his hand on Geno’s cock.

When Geno looks down at him Sid makes sure their eyes meet.

“You sure about this,” he whispers and Sid glances away from his face to watch Geno’s adam’s apple bob up and down when he swallows.

Geno wraps his fingers around Sid’s wrists and Sid is ready to be brushed off. Sid will back away and Geno will zip up his pants and he will find a different group to join. One with a counselor whos dick he hasn’t touched.

Instead Geno forces Sid’s hand to move back and forth, urging him to continue the rhythm that was making his breath come out in short pants.

“Okay,” Sid says as he takes over. He speeds his hand up and Geno whines in the back of his throat. “Okay.”

Whatever happens to Geno after this isn’t his fault. It’s not Sid’s responsibility. It’s out his hands.

Which is exactly where he wants it to be.

-

Sid starts the day with five pills in his pocket.

He takes one with lunch, always. Sometimes takes another before dinner. It depends how he feels.

“It’s for my knee,” he says if anyone at work gives him a funny look. “Pain pill.”

They nod like they understand, like it’s not a problem.

Which it wouldn’t be except Sid’s knee isn’t the part of him that still hurts.

-

He wasn’t always like this.

After the surgery he flat out refused the pills. He didn’t want to get hooked. He heard the stories. 

He could deal with the pain.

But then it got to be too much and he accepted the pills the doctor prescribed to him.

He slept through the night for the first time in months.

He took the pills and he kept taking them even when the pain was barely noticeable and the doctor said he didn’t need them anymore.

After that he took a few from the medicine cabinets in his friends bathrooms. And then a few more. They wouldn’t miss them. They didn’t even need them. He did.

They’re not hard to find and not that expensive if you know where to look out on the street.

It’s not always back alley deals with shady looking men in heavy overcoats either.

They’re often professionals in sharply tailored suits who smile through the exchange of pills and money and pat him on the back like they’re just old friends catching up.

He’s careful about it. Or at least he was until he goes home to visit his parents and swiped a few tablets of demerol from his parents medicine cabinet.

His father had back surgery a few months ago. He should have known that his mother counts them and kept track. That’s just like her. 

Sid empties his pockets on the dining room table and she unfolded the napkin with the pills inside.

He kept his chin up as she cried and begged him to get help.

“Please talk to someone, please,” she cried and underneath it all Sid likes to think he’s still a good son. Good sons don’t like to see their mother’s cry.

“Okay,” he said and let his mother gather him close to her. “I promise.”

-

He left the first group he joined right in the middle of it.

“Who cares if you can’t play hockey anymore,” a woman- a girl-really, barely out of her teens, spat at him. Her father died suddenly and she started drinking. “So what?”

She was quickly scolded by the counselor and several other members but Sid got up without saying another word and walked out.

That didn’t happen again.

He doesn’t talk. 

He never stays with a group long enough to really get to know anyone.

These people are not his friends.

He doesn’t want to sit around with them and drink ginger ale while they watch the game.

He doesn’t think he even knows how to have friends anymore. All of his friends still play hockey.

And he can’t.

Turns out there’s not a lot of common ground outside the rink.

At home alone in his apartment he eats dinner and takes a pill before he takes a shower and goes to bed.

It’s enough.

-

Geno is the counselor of the sixth group he joined.

He’s the tallest but not the youngest.

His last name is Malkin and his first name is really Evgeni but he greeted everyone as they came in with a smile and a blank name tag and a _“can call me Geno, happy to meet you.”_

Sid wrote his name on the tag on the table with the burnt coffee and stale donuts and stuck it to his chest.

In the doorway Geno laughed. Sid let the sound wash over him as he bit into a donut and took his seat.

Geno didn’t push anyone to talk.

Sid spends most of his time in meetings tuning everyone else out. There in body, not always in mind.

But the first time Geno said his name it was like the first word he had every heard.

Sid lifted his head and Geno was looking between him and the clipboard on his lap. One long leg was folded over the other.

“Sid. You want to talk?”

Sid cleared his throat and shook his head and Geno gave him a gentle smile. “Okay.” He nodded towards the man to Sid’s left. “Neil, yes? How about you?”

For the rest of the meeting Sid alternated between looking down at his shoes and looking up at the patch of stubble that Geno missed while he was shaving that morning.

-

Geno has a scar on his left knee that looks a lot like the one on Sid’s right knee.

Sid saw it for the first time during their fifth meeting, a record for him. He was usually long gone by then. 

It was a hundred degrees outside and easily a hundred and ten in the high school gym they were in and Geno walked in wearing shorts.

“Been here before,” he explained as everyone else fanned themselves with napkins or paper plates.

He set down a tray of iced coffee and looked at Sid.

“Not very professional but not going to melt.”

Sid spent the meeting looking at the scar and refusing to talk.

-

Tonight Sid sits between Geno’s bent knees and traces the scar with his fingertip.

Geno’s reading a book about the Russian revolution and pretending to ignore him.

Sid kisses his kneecap and the edge of Geno’s mouth twists up.

Sid doesn’t know the story behind the scar. He’s sure Geno would tell him if he asked but he never has.

He just knows that Geno doesn’t limp when he walks. Sid watches him walk a lot.

He also doesn’t have any pills, not even advil in the cabinet over the bathroom sink. Sid found that out on the hunt for condoms a few weeks ago.

For the first time looking for meds was an afterthought.

He was too distracted and too turned on to think of anything but condoms and lube and Geno spread out and waiting for him on off white sheets that made him look more tan than he actually was.

He doesn’t need to know about the scar.

Geno doesn’t know anything about him.

Sid doesn’t even know if Geno knows what he goes to these meetings for.

The lack of pills in Geno’s apartment might be a coincidence.

“Do you ever worry,” Sid asks and Geno looks over the top of the book at him.

“What do you mean?”

Sid’s honestly not sure what he means.

He sets the palm of his hand over Geno’s knee and slides it down his shin. The coarse hair there catches on his palm.

“A lot of things I guess.”

That they’ll get caught. That Geno will get in trouble. That he’ll end up regretting the first time they kissed all those weeks ago. That he’ll find out about Sid and the pills he keeps in his pocket and judge him. It’s his job to not judge but it’s also his job to not sleep with the people he’s counseling.

A lot could go wrong here.

In Sid’s life it usually does.

“Sure,” Geno says and Sid forgets for a moment what he asked. “Worry about lots. It’s natural. How you handle the worry is what matters.”

It sounds like something he would say in group and it makes Sid shake his head.

Geno puts the book down. “Come up here.”

Sid goes easily.

-

Sometimes people will drop one addiction and pick up another.

Snapping a rubber band against their wrist or chewing gum or biting their nails.

Sid’s pretty sure he’s dropping pills and picking up sex with Geno.

They spend a rainy day together at Geno’s place.

Geno takes his time with him, kissing up and down his body. He doesn’t linger at Sid’s knee and threads their fingers together when Sid curls them into the sheets.

Geno orders pizza for lunch and they eat it on the couch in front of the TV. Sid is in one of Geno’s threadbare shirts and Geno’s not wearing anything.

Geno’s still chewing on the crust when Sid drops a pillow to the floor and kneels in front of him. Sid grips his thighs and Geno winds slightly greasy fingers through Sid’s hair, just holding until Sid pulls off and kisses the tip of his dick.

“You can pull,” Sid says, “I like it,”

Geno stares up at the ceiling before he looks down. He presses his thumb to the corner of his lips before he slides his his fingers back into his hair.

“Favorite. You’re my favorite.”

Sid smiles and sinks back down as Geno gives his hair a gentle tug. 

They eat the cold leftovers for dinner and Geno leaves the empty box on the counter in favor of manhandling Sid into his tiny shower with him.

Sid still has soap on the tops of his shoulders when Geno hauls him out.

He laughs as Geno pushes him towards the bed, moans when Geno pushes inside him for the first time.

Geno kisses the back of his neck and runs his hand up and down his spine.

Sid arches his back as Geno whispers words he doesn’t understand against his skin.

Geno’s mattress is a little thin and there’s a spring or a bar or something that sticks out and with Geno fucking into him like this Sid’s knee keeps hitting it.

He moans again and it must not sound right because Geno stops immediately and pulls out even though Sid begs him not to.

“It’s fine, I’m fine,” he says quickly as Geno eases him to his side and then to his back. “I’m fine.” He’s not broken, not in a way that Geno can know about.

Geno kisses him. “Just want to see you, okay?”

Sid nods and hooks his ankles around his back.

-

Sid wakes up in the middle of the night with the terrifying realization that there are still five pills in the pocket of his jeans.

He drums his fingers against Geno’s chest and tries to tell himself that it’s okay.

He watches Geno’s eyelids flutter in the light streaming in through the window until he can’t take it anymore.

He slides out of bed and sits on the floor as he digs through his pockets.

His hands are shaking as he unwraps the pills and holds them in his palm.

His mind is blank as he looks down at them. He thinks of nothing until Geno says his name and he looks up.

There’s no point in pretending that he’s not holding anything so he doesn’t. He just sits there on the cold floor and lets Geno stare at him from the end of the bed.

“Sid,” Geno says again but this time with his hand out.

Sid’s not sure what he’s asking for but he stuffs the pills back into his pocket, drops the pants back to the floor, and puts his hand in Geno’s.

Geno pulls him up all the way into his arms and they lay back against the pillows.

Sid feels Geno take a deep breath before he drops a kiss onto the top of his head.

-

Geno’s up before him in the morning.

The shower is running as Sid throws the covers off his legs and takes the pills out of his pocket again and sits on the edge of the bed with them in his hand.

That’s how Geno finds him.

Ten minutes later he steps out followed by steam and rubbing a towel over his hair.

He stops in the doorway and Sid hangs his head and holds the napkin out.

“Can you take these,” he asks and Geno says “yes” immediately.

Sid drops them into his hand and a moment later hears the toilet flush.

When Geno comes back he sits right beside him and wraps his arm around Sid’s back.

Sid rests his head on Geno’s shoulder and breathes him in.

Soap and his shampoo and aftershave.

Geno calls him baby and tells him it’s going to be okay.

Sid might believe him.

-

They have a meeting in the afternoon so Sid goes home to change. 

His pockets are empty when he walks into the meeting and he shakes his head when he sees Geno’s eyes drop down.

Besides that Geno treats him the same as he always has. 

He greets the group and goes around the circle asking everyone how they’re doing, if they have anything they’d like to say. 

Geno turns to him. 

“Sid? Anything you want to share?”

Sid wants to ask him if he’s ever been in love. If he could tell him what that feels like, if it’s anything like what he’s feeling now. 

Instead he takes a deep breath and locks eyes with Geno and says “I used to play hockey.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my [tumblr](https://secret-sidgeno-writer.tumblr.com/) for more


End file.
